


A Sky of Stars and Dust

by Pixelfun20



Series: There Are Much Worse Games to Play [2]
Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Dave | Technoblade and Wilbur Soot and TommyInnit are Siblings, Everything is platonic. If that, Gen, Gosh I'm writing a fic with a main character OC, Hurt/Comfort, No Romance, Therapy, Wilbur Soot Needs a Hug, Wilbur Soot gets therapy, Wilbur Soot-centric, Wilbur leaves and accidentally gets therapy the fic, alternative universe, dream smp au, farming!, please don't assume this is bad, through astronomy lessons!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:20:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27986067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pixelfun20/pseuds/Pixelfun20
Summary: Wilbur Soot has been travelling for a long time. He hops from world to world, never staying for too long, never meeting other people in his travels. He's fine with that. He left the Dream SMP to be alone, and now he's finally getting his wish.That is, however, until he accidentally lands himself in a single-player world with no means of leaving. Trapped inside with the world's solitary player, Wilbur realizes that perhaps he's been running from his past for a little too long.--The sequel to my fic "A Land of Thorns and Roses."
Relationships: Wilbur Soot & Original Female Character
Series: There Are Much Worse Games to Play [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2013130
Comments: 17
Kudos: 107





	A Sky of Stars and Dust

**Author's Note:**

> Hey... this took a while. To be honest, I'm not sure when the next chapter will come out, but I finally finished chapter one and wanted to share it with you all. I still feel weird about having an OC featuring so heavily, but here's to hoping you guys like her!

He travels for a long time.

He sees worlds of every kind, each screwed up in their own special way. It’s an effective method of bringing him back to the old days, of lava rising from the ground or TNT falling from the sky.

This time, though, Wilbur Soot is alone.

And he rather likes that. He gets the time to himself that he never had back on the Dream SMP, and finally finds himself without any expectations. He can lay around and do nothing all day or work until his hands bleed and no one is there to scold him for it. He can up and leave a world whenever he wants to, and no one is behind him to be left behind. 

He finds good worlds and bad ones. Ones where it’s so dark you can hardly see your hand in front of your face, others where cutting down a tree gives you a few hundred diamonds. Some worlds are entirely normal, some are rotting away at the seams, and Wilbur explores all of them. Sometimes he only stays for a few hours, sometimes a few weeks, always staying close to spawn so he could leave at a moment’s notice. 

The worlds are never inhabited.

There are good days and bad days. Days where he can run and jump and fight mobs all through the night and feels like he’s on top of the world, freer than he’s ever been. And there are days when his back seizes so painfully he can’t move for hours on end, when he sits and cries because he went and made three plates for dinner instead of one. Wilbur takes them all as they come, because at the end of the day recovery is never a linear process. 

Sometimes he asks himself if he’s really recovering, or if he’s running.

He spawns into the next world on one of his bad days.

For one, the previous world had been atrocious, for lack of a better word. He’s nursing a deep cut on his left arm and his back is dealing him a new one with painful contractions that make it impossible to do anything but lie on the soft grass underneath him. For another, his mind is playing tricks on him again, because he swears he’s hearing voices.

It takes him a few moments to realize that there are hands on him and the voices are very much  _ not _ in his head.

He tries to jerk away, forgetting his current condition and paying for it with ripples of pain that have him curling even more into himself. The hands on him are gentle, though, taking a firm hold on his left arm, and Wilbur hears a tongue clucking. 

He forces himself to open his eyes. He’s lying on his side in a forest, face positioned so he’s looking straight at an oak tree hardly a few feet away. He can see two horses, a pretty brown and white mare in diamond armor and a black-speckled white stallion in gold armor, tied to a fence post near the tree. The mare gives him a cursory look before tossing its head with a nicker and bowing down to graze on the forest grass.

Huh. That’s a first in his travels. 

There’s a  _ rip _ of cloth tearing, and then bandages are being wrapped around his injured arm. Wilbur would very much like to turn and see who exactly he’d run into, now that his mind is clearing enough for him to register what’s going on around him, but whoever they are is right behind him, and if there’s one thing that’s not happening right now, it’s Wilbur moving his back. 

“You’ve gotten yourself in quite the pickle, haven’t you?” The person behind him says, and Wilbur notes that “they” is a “she” (well, unless she said otherwise later). He doesn’t respond to her words though, concentrating on the feeling of the bandages being wrapped tightly around his arm before the hands leave with a pat on the arm. 

The hands return, now on his back as if trying to lift him, but Wilbur flinches at that, hard enough that the limbs instantly retreat. He hears a long sigh, shuffling, and then a shattering of glass right behind his neck makes him flinch again, hard enough that he can’t help the noise of pain that escapes his mouth.

But then… well, the pain in his back doesn’t fade, not exactly. Becomes more tolerable is probably a better way of putting it. Suddenly he can move his back again, and his senses are just a bit sharper as his body stops trembling.

A splash potion of strength. 

Wilbur blinks in surprise, but takes it as it comes. This time, when the hands meet his shoulders, carefully avoiding the worst of his back, he’s able to sit up, blinking against the light of the midafternoon sun peeking through the trees.

The footsteps of the person behind him move, and then he sees the owner of the voice and the hands as she comes into view.

It’s a woman, younger than him but not by too much, maybe around Quackity’s age. She’s wearing a long-sleeved cream shirt under a pinkish-reddish vest laced together in the middle, with jeans and a satchel under one arm and a bow and quiver over her back. She had bright blond hair that turned a dark blue at the tips, just a shade darker than her eyes.

“Who are you?” He asks, trying to catch his bearings.

The woman tilts her head at him. “Who are  _ you _ ?” She asks.

Oh. Right. Wilbur’s just intruded on her world, which is odd because he’s been avoiding inhabited servers for this exact reason.

“Sorry,” he says, grunting as he forces himself to his feet. He rises quite a bit taller than her, and he realizes that while she’s not really short, she’s shorter than Niki and Tubbo and thus has to tilt her head to look up at him. “This was an accident, I’ll be going now—”

“Please,” the woman huffs. She takes his wrist, gently tugging him away from spawn. “If you try and leave now you’ll make your injuries worse. Strength pots make wounds easier to bear, but they don’t heal them. Come on; if you’re feeling better you can try and go tomorrow morning.”

Against his better judgement, Wilbur lets her lead him away.

* * *

The forest is actually pretty small. The woman gives him the gold-armored stallion to ride as she mounts the mare. It’s a short journey before they've left the forest behind, the horses’ hooves clicking against smooth stone as they enter a large mountain range. As the sun dips lower towards the horizon, they ride in silence, Wilbur doing his best to push through the pain in his back and arm and the woman keeping one hand on the lead that was steering the stallion Wilbur was riding. Part of him feels bad for not being able to take the reins himself, but at the same time the only thing keeping him from falling off his mount altogether is the strength potion, and the woman seems skilled enough at directing two horses anyways. 

They crest over a rise, and Wilbur looks up to see a mountain rising in front of them. Part of the face has been carved out by a large cavern, and there’s a birch bridge connecting the plateau they’re on to the cave, which shows signs of human habitation. If it’s the woman’s home, Wilbur is surprised, because the make of the horse’s armor suggests a much higher quality of life, but he keeps his thoughts to himself.

They cross the bridge, and just in time, too, because the pain in his back is becoming harder and harder to ignore as the strength potion fades. He dismounts quickly once they’re inside, the woman tying the horses to another fence pole sitting just inside the cavern’s mouth. Wilbur puts a hand on the wall to steady himself. There is a rough, wooden wall in front of him, with all the signs of a day one starter base all over it, an oak door plopped in the middle. 

The woman takes his arm, leading him inside. There isn’t much, just a decently-sized room with three of the four walls naturally-cut stone. Two beds sit on either wall, and a small table, furnace, and crafting table in the back. In the far corner there’s a small mine, dipping down and out of sight. 

The woman maneuvers him to one of the beds, as he’s really struggling now, and he can’t help the sigh of relief that escapes his lips as he sinks down into the mattress. The last few worlds have been particularly unforgiving, so the feeling of the soft, woolen blanket underneath his back feels like heaven.

He lays there for a moment or ten, manners forgotten as he drifts into a half-doze. Distantly, he hears chests creaking and a fire starting up, but by that point the comfort already has him closing his eyes.

And he opens them again with most of the pain in his back gone. Wilbur blinks, realizing a blanket had been pulled over him at some point. 

He sits up, back sore but not really painful, and blinks a few times, trying to remember what had happened. There’d been the previous world that… hadn’t turned out too well, and he’d left in a panic with his back and arm murdering him. Then there’d been the forest and the horses, and the woman who’d confronted him and then taken him to her house.

Wilbur realized that they’d never even exchanged names, and suddenly he feels very embarrassed over this situation. 

“Oh, you’re up. That’s good.”

Wilbur jerks his head up in surprise to see the woman looking down at him. She still looks the same as before, the cream shirt and blonde-blue hair, and that makes him realize that this wasn’t some weird fever dream.

“I… sorry about all of this,” Wilbur says, voice hoarse. How long has it been since he’s seen or talked to someone? He thinks of Purpled waving goodbye to him, so long ago. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

It’s been a while.

“It’s fine,” the woman shrugs, and holds out a bowl for him. “I was expecting you. Here.” 

Wilbur blinks as the bowl, brimming with broth, is thrust in his face. He hesitates for a moment before taking it, because it  _ has  _ been a while since he’s had the opportunity to eat and now that he’s seeing food his stomach is making that known. He gingerly raises it to his mouth, sipping at the liquid as the woman sits on the bed across from him. 

“It’s almost midnight, now,” the woman says. “You were out for a few hours. When morning comes you can try and leave the server, but if not, we’ll have to start travelling to my base.”

Wilbur blinks at that, surprised. The woman rolls her eyes, but there’s a quirk to her lips that makes it good-natured.

“This is just my old starter base,” she explains. “I just use it when I’m travelling to spawn. My main base is around a day and a half’s journey from here.”

“Oh,” Wilbur says quietly, setting the now half-empty bowl of broth on his lap. “Thank you.”

“No problem.”

“Who are you?”

The woman shrugs. “Well, my name is ExplodingQuasar; you can just call me Quasar. I’m a farmer, ameteur astronomer and local trader. This is a single-player world you’ve landed in.”

“I thought no one but the owner could join a single-player world,” Wilbur asks. The woman shrugs again. 

“I’ve stopped asking myself that question a long time ago.”

“What?”

Quasar raises an eyebrow at him. “You’re not the first person to land here, you know.”

“There are other people here?”

“Sometimes. They land here on accident, and then leave after a little while. You’re the first to come in a few months, though.”

“Oh.” That might explain why the woman has taken him in so willingly. He takes the bowl again and downs another few gulps of broth. It’s warm and creamy on his tongue. “I’m Wilbur, by the way. Wilbur Soot.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Soot.” Quasar smiles, and then she stands, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Finish that up and get to sleeping. We have a big day tomorrow.”

* * *

Despite having passed out for at least six hours beforehand, Wilbur sleeps long and hard for the rest of the night. When Quasar shakes him awake, the first rays of dawn burning away the monsters that ruled the night, he can feel one of his good days coming on, his back nothing but a little stiff and his arm healing nicely. Quasar helps him change his bandages, then they share some granola for breakfast and leave her old starter base.

“What are the horses’ names?” He asks. They’re certainly beauties, and very well kept. Quasar mounts the brown and white mare, and Wilbur follows her lead as he takes the black-speckled stallion. 

“Oh, this girl here is Andromeda,” Quasar responds, patting the mare’s head. “The one you’re riding is Messier. Andromeda has some spunk, but she likes me. Messier is as easy as they come; you won’t have any trouble with him.”

This time, Quasar doesn’t tie a lead between the two horses, just snapping Andromeda’s reins and trotting off across the birchwood bridge. Wilbur copies the motion with Messier, and sure enough the stallion follows his lead without protest, hurrying after his owner.

Wilbur has to admit, the place is pretty. The Dream SMP didn’t have any real mountains that he had ever seen, just rolling hills, and he finds himself turning his head around to take in the beauty of the snow-capped peaks and the rushing river below them, cutting a ravine into the base of the mountain. There’s a sharp, gusty wind going around as well, leaving every breath he takes with a nice chill to it.

Now that he’s not in complete agony and hopped up on a strength pot, Wilbur is better able to recognize where Quasar is taking them. She goes down the mountain range and into the forest, and Wilbur follows her. Besides the starter base, there are no landmarks in sight, the area remarkably untouched for a world’s spawn, but Quasar seems to know where she’s going, weaving through the trees and making small adjustments here and there. Soon enough, they enter the small clearing Wilbur recognizes from his arrival the day before. 

“Here,” Quasar says, dismounting and tapping her foot at a specific part in the ground, marked by a small rock. Unlike the SMP’s spawn, it was completely unremarkable. Without Quasar’s direction he probably would have ridden right past it. “Try and leave.”

Wilbur hops off of Messier, frowning at the choice of words but stepping on the spawn block. It’s a shame this world was inhabited, really. He rather likes it. He shakes his head to try and push away the thoughts, though, and focuses.

He wants to leave. 

_ Take me to a new world. A  _ solitary _ one. _

Nothing happens. Wilbur frowns, and tries again, trying to find that link to take him outside of the world, the link that every spawn block provides, the one he’s used dozens of times now. 

Once again, all he feels in absence.

“No luck?” Quasar asks, jolting Wilbur out of his thoughts. She doesn’t look particularly surprised at his situation. Wilbur turns to her, an odd, negative emotion swelling in his chest.

“Have you done something to spawn?!” He demanda. To be honest, he isn’t sure if one  _ could _ mess with spawn commands; they were intrinsic parts of every player’s code. 

Quasar shakes her head, taking the outburst in stride. 

“No,” she says simply. “Even admins can’t cut off a spawn’s connection to the Hub. This place is just special. It shuts down sometimes.” She pauses, thinking, then amends the statement. “Most of the time.”

“How am I supposed to leave?!” Desperation is rising in Wilbur’s chest. Before, he’d always had the choice to leave. Even in the SMP it had always been an option, one he’d eventually taken. To have that stripped away… it made Wilbur feel powerless in a way he was entirely uncomfortable with.

Quasar shrugs. “You’ll know when you’ll leave,” she replies, as calm as ever. “No one ever stays for too long. You’ll get spit out of here eventually.”

“How will I know when I can leave?”

Quasar shrugs again. “How would I know? I’ve never left.” She turns and walks back to Andromeda, patting her on the nose. “Now come on. I have to get back to my base, and you need a place to stay.”

She mounts Andromeda, then looks back at Wilbur when he hasn’t moved. 

“Aren’t you coming?” She asks.

For a moment, Wilbur just stands there, on the spawn block, hoping against hope that it’ll start working.

Then with shaking hands, he walks away.


End file.
